We finished our unit of "Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles" this week. We learned that, if we're reading a storybook, characters will do one thing and then another thing, and we can use our brain and everything we know about the story to make predictions. Sometimes readers pause and wonder what will happen next. We practiced this alone and then we asked our partners to make predictions. We also learned how to Super Size our Book Talk Power and Partner Power. We already knew how to talk about our favorite parts, or parts that are hard to read, but now we can talk about more. Once we finish a story, we can talk to our partner about what the characters did, how they felt and why they felt that way.
This is a wonderful conversation to have with your young readers at home, too!
Our All About books are getting good! This week, we learned that not only can we teach with our words, but with our pictures! We can make diagrams and label them (see photo). We can also help our reader understand more when we use comparisons. For example, "A dolphin swims fast like a car". We all tried to use comparisons in our writing this week.
In geometry, we continued to list attributes of each 2-D shape. What's the difference between a circle and a rectangle? We're working on expanding our mathematical vocabulary. We also learned two new shapes: a trapezoid and hexagon. We did pattern block puzzles to find combinations of shapes that fill an area and then we made a pattern block picture of our own. Last, we used geoboards to construct 2-D shapes (see photo).
We began a large unit on geography in Social Studies this week. We began by examining a map of Connecticut and discussing what we noticed and wondered (see photo). Then we read a book about a pig named Henry that makes a map of his farm. We made our own maps of the classroom, too!
We started doing dictations in our phonics lessons. Students are told a word and then have to tap out the sounds and write it down. Some words we can tap out (fin, dog, lap, etc.), but others we can't (do, we, like, etc), because they're sight words.
News and Notes:
- Book sleeves due Monday.
- Conference week is next Tuesday-Friday. Please remember that their is NO BUYING SNACK ON HALF DAYS.
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| A class diagram |
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| What we look like when we "Stop and Think" |
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| Dictation |
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| Number Bingo! |
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| Word Board Games |
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| Making Boats |
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| Decomposing Numbers |
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| Spring Kites! |
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| A Diagram in an All About Book |
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| Building 2D Shapes on Geoboards |
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| Making Maps of our Classroom |
